The article fails to mention whether Pope Francis has already done any praying for the unemployed. I suspect he tried it before deciding to devote an entire month to such prayers. Presumably his prayer-power is strongest in Italy, and weakens with distance. Besides, Italy is predominantly Catholic, and you would expect it to benefit more from papal prayers than a Protestant country like the United States. Yet Italy has an unemployment rate of 11.2% while the United States has only a 4.4% rate of unemployment. Even if you limit yourself to Europe, the Euro zone has an unemployment rate of 9.1%, still considerably better than Italy.

In fact, popes have a remarkably bad record of producing good jobs. Throughout much of Church history, popes were also secular kings of the Papal States. They did a terrible job of running the economy - one of the main reasons they lost their territories, and one of the reasons the people of the Papal States kept rebelling. Popes certainly prayed a lot to regain the Papal States, and my guess is that they previously prayed for God to satisfy their people and keep them from rebelling.

What kind of track record do popes have praying for their employees? Does anyone doubt that Pope John Paul, and Pope Benedict, and Pope Francis prayed that priests would stop abusing children? Or that God would remove pederast priests from office? Keep in mind that priests are brides of Christ, taking vows of chastity for His sake. Would God even need papal prayers to do something about their adultery, particularly when it involves sexually abusing children? If papal prayer hasn’t worked for pederast priests, how likely is it to work for the millions of unemployed?

What a pile of crap! Not only does it get media coverage, it gets praise. No one tells Pope Francis to do something useful with his time, like protecting children from priests. Why doesn't he clean house instead of using his sovereign status to protect perverts?